We started making machines together in 2010. These machines consisted of a sensor and device couplet, by which a sensor would trigger a device to perform a simple task. We experimented with sensor inputs like passing cars and tasks like heat guns blowing up trash bags, or later we would connect the machines to trains and have them push little cardboard cars back and forth. Still triggered by trains, the machines now move clock parts.

We disassemble mechanical clocks, take their parts and combine them with L-brackets, screws, washers, nuts, motors, felt, rubber bands, fishing line, and heat shrink tubing. The characteristics of the clock parts constrain and guide our activities. As we reinvent their function, the parts become less and less recognizable, their movements more and more estranged.

—Michèle Graf & Selina Grüter, 2023

In July, the bookshop will pack up and temporarily relocate to Brunette Coleman in London, presenting a selection of books alongside artworks from past and future projects.

With works, books and ephemera from Michèle Graf & Selina Grüter, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, Stuart Sherman, Janet Burchill and Jennifer McCamley, gerlach en koop, Wyatt Niehaus, Ian Burn, Willem Oorebeek, Anna Daučíková, Seth Siegelaub’s International General imprint, Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt, a selection of publications around early abstract experimental Japanese photography by Kiyoshi Koishi, Ei-Q, Kiyoji Ōtsuji, Nakaji Yasui, Iwata Nakayama, Kansuke Yamamoto, Osamu Shiihara amongst others, Marietta Mavrokordatou, Barbara Bloom, Marian Zazeela, Eugene Carchesio, Anna Oppermann, Lili Dujourie, Cady Noland, Nasreen Mohamedi, Jason Dodge, Mladen Stilinović, Laurie Parsons, Kōshirō Onchi, Jochen Lempert, Atsuko Tanaka, Hans Bellmer, Gutai, readymades belong to everyone®, Philippe Thomas, Trisha Donnelly, Lucy McKenzie, Jef Geys, Ilke Gers, Henri Michaux, Kazuna Taguchi, Pierre Klossowski, Lutz Bacher, Etel Adnan, Zoe Leonard, Ian Wilson, David Robilliard, VALIE EXPORT, Ketty La Rocca, Michael Snow, Ibon Aranberri, Charlotte Posenenske, Běla Kolářová, Yvonne Rainer, stanley brouwn, Margaret Honda, Moyra Davey, Tim Rollins and K.O.S., Sanja Iveković, Robert Filliou, Michael Krebber, Manfred Pernice, Ronald Jones, Ezio Gribaudo, Paul Sharits, On Kawara, Fiona Connor, Cinzia Ruggeri, Barbara T. Smith, Man Ray, Derek Jarman, Tetsumi Kudo, Guy Mees, Mária Bartuszová, Guy de Cointet, Kai Althoff, Christopher Williams, Richard Tuttle, Marie Laurencin, Jay Chung & Q Takeki Maeda, Hanne Darboven, Francis Picabia, Simone Forti, Susan Howe, Algirdas Šeškus, Marcel Broodthaers, Dora Budor, Jack Goldstein, Alina Szapocznikow, Poul Gernes, John Knight, Tomio Miki, Chantal Akerman, Francesca Woodman, Sarah Rapson, Franz Erhard Walther, Vivian Suter and others.

Until August, the Amsterdam space will be open by appointment only and web orders will run as usual.

Image: Presentation of a round bar of wood by André Cadere, Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris, 23 November–7 December 1975 in André Cadere: Peinture sans fin, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln, 2007, p. 75.

“A sense of art history is part of the critical basis on which artists construct ‘a future’ of art. But the question is, which sense of art history will be shaping that future? Art history has always been far too important to be simply left up to art historians.”
— Ian Burn, 1985

This presentation is organised by Robert Milne and includes a work by Ian Burn from 1989, exhibited with selected publications and other documentation, to coincide with the release of the new book. The Estate of Ian Burn is represented by Milani Gallery, Meanjin/Brisbane.

“The actual distribution of the centers of wheat and rice production in the world can be seen to coincide fairly accurately with the areas of adequate rainfall. A temperate climate and rainfall adequate to the production of either wheat or rice provide the agricultural basis for the power of any state. A region which lacks these elements in any appreciable degree finds itself doomed to play a secondary role in the power relations of the world.”

— Spykman, Nicholas John. The Geography of the Peace. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1944.

Since the early 1970s, Marc Camille Chaimowicz has defied straightforward categorisation, creating large-scale installations that combine everything from found objects, painting, performance and sculpture to lighting and ceramics. Visually rich and precisely observed, the objects and images he designs, makes, and gathers from elsewhere propose connections, set up oppositions, and trace narratives in a dense play of puzzle, metaphor, and interpretative possibility. This approach extends seamlessly to the printed material associated with his practice, which range from books, invitation cards, posters, prints, clothing and wine labels.